Inspired by a powerful message from Dr. Pat Briney, Kimberly and John dig into one of the most convicting questions a believer can face: if your trust in God isn’t total, is it really trust at all? Spoiler — the Bible says no. And honestly, our stress levels, our backup plans, and our furrowed eyebrows in the middle of a hard morning are telling on us whether we realize it or not.
From Peter stepping out of the boat to Paul waiting blind in Damascus for three days to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego standing firm in front of a blazing furnace — the pattern is the same. God doesn’t ask for partial trust. He calls us to get all the way in the chair.
This episode is honest, practical, and deeply encouraging for anyone who has ever prayed Proverbs 3:5-6 in the morning and then white-knuckled through a crisis by 10 AM.
Key Takeaways:
Jacob Paul: Welcome to the Truth in Love podcast with your hosts Kimberly Faith and John Mac. The Truth in Love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.
Kimberly Faith: Well, dad, here we are again. Podcast number 86.
John McLarty: That is truly amazing.
Kimberly Faith: It’s just incredible that we get to be part of God’s work.
John McLarty: It’s just a testimony to the richness of God’s word.
Kimberly Faith: I know.
John McLarty: Our podcast is centered on God’s word, and it’s just deeper than we can delve into.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: We humbly try.
Kimberly Faith: You know, I love that because wouldn’t it be terrible to worship a god that you could understand, that you could fully grasp?
John McLarty: Just figure out
Kimberly Faith: Explain away.
John McLarty: One semester. Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: Where’s the awe and wonder in that, right? Just, yeah, it’s wonderful.
John McLarty: Yeah, I’m hearing things at church and then just in the scripture. We’ve all done it, all of our listeners that have been in the Word. You read a passage you’ve read 50 times, but it speaks to you in a different way.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. God’s Word is so deep. It’s so deep. Well, this podcast, the title is, If Trust in God is Less Than 100%, Is It Trust at All? And I heard that, Pat Briney, Doctor.
Pat Briney, one of our associate pastors, he said, If our trust in God is not 100%, then it is not trust at all.
John McLarty: I remember that message.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, or trust at all, I should say. Yeah, and I remember thinking, that just kind of knocked me out of my pew. You know, I was like, that makes so much sense. And, you know, the classic example from the Bible is Peter. When he was in the boat and Jesus came walking on the water in Matthew 14, and he said, Jesus said, Come out here, Peter. And Peter’s I mean, he was either 100% trusting Jesus when he says, I trust you, or not at that point.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And Peter said, Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come out to you on the water. And Jesus says, Come. And for a moment, Peter got to experience what it’s like to have 100% an act of trusting God. But then fear creeps back in and he loses the trust. His faith waivers basically. Of course, Jesus catches him and says, Why did you doubt? But I think for me, I think about just the things that I do that reflect that I have am exercising less than 100% trust, which is not trust at all. And so we’re going to talk about in this podcast kind of the why that’s true and then just some ways to know if you are not 100% trusting. We’re going to talk about this in two segments.
John McLarty: I remember the visual aid Pat gave. He was in front of the church and there are some benches there, like the prayer benches. But partially, he made the motion of sitting down and got about an inch or two above the bench and then stopped. And he was just, So you’re
Kimberly Faith: He was doing the chair.
John McLarty: Yeah, you’re straining. He said, This is partially, I’m not really trusting, complete trust. And he just sat down and he went, Oh, yeah. It’s holding.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. You think about I appreciate you bringing up that example because you think about, what if your favorite easy chair, what if that was the place where you would just go at the end of the day and just relax and, you know, just let the worry of the world slip away and and maybe even take a little snooze, you know? And what if you didn’t 100% trust that couch or easy chair, then your face would still show it. You’d be anxious. Is this really going to hold me? You wouldn’t be able to fully relax.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: And people around you would know, what’s wrong with you? You’re sitting in your favorite easy chair and you act like it’s going to collapse. They could tell, you know? And I think that people can tell if we’re not 100% trusting the Lord by what we say, what we do, what we look like. I think this is just a remark,I mean, it’s been a remarkable lesson for me to really evaluate. I say I trust in the Lord with all my heart, right? I pray every morning before I get out of bed. Lord, I want to trust you with all my heart. I don’t want to lean to my own understanding. I want to acknowledge you in all my ways because I want you to direct my path. Then about 10:00 in the morning when I’m handling some crazy situation in my office, the eyebrows are furrowed. My whoop is saying, your stress level’s high, reminding me.
John McLarty: Well, you said people can tell, which is true, and we can tell.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: Because it’s that inner, our mind races.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. That’s right.
John McLarty: We lose our, just you might say, presence of the now and the ministry because our mind is racing to various areas of worry.
Kimberly Faith: Our mission for Christ is shattered because we have stopped trusting. It’s such a testament to whether we are in fact trusting God as we say we are, by how we’re handling the stress in our life.
John McLarty: Well, that verse, I’ll have to read that because that’s our family, Lynn and I’s theme verse, and it’s Proverbs 3:5-6. Challenging verse.
Kimberly Faith:Yeah.
John McLarty: Easy to read and just recite.Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. It’s so rich. And, you know, so the question is, is partial trust like, I’m going to trust you, God, with maybe this, right, but not this. Is that even trust at all?
John McLarty: Is that even trust? That was the challenge
Kimberly Faith: That was the challenge.
John McLarty: Challenge message from Doctor. Pat Briney.
Kimberly Faith: And this verse really challenges us, God’s calling us to trust him in all, with all our heart and for all our ways. I mean, that means every corner of our life. And I think, I mean that’s obviously a journey, a discipline that you have to retrain yourself to do if you’ve never done it. I’ll be honest, in the last fifteen years of my walk with God, it’s been a process. And I can see and, you know, God is so good to show us how to do that. He doesn’t, like, hide the ball. Like, we just can learn this on your own. He gives like, I can clearly look back at my life and see where he, like finances. When I first started pursuing him with all my heart, he really blessed my finances in a way that it was so obvious to me that it was him and not me because I just contrasted it with the prior history when I was not following him. And that was how he spoke to me in that moment.
But then when I was starting to recognize that was his presence and feeling his presence and the peace, then he kind of throttled back on that area and said, okay. You’ve got this now. Now I’m going to take you to the next time to get out of the boat. And that blessing of finances allowed me to do some things for ministry that I wouldn’t have been able to do, and then he drew it back. And then I had another period where he blessed me with ministry opportunities and helped me see the finances, see, I could trust him for that. I already knew that now. I’d learned that. So when it seemed like that was less, what he was teaching me to do was more in the area of trust. And so God doesn’t expect us to learn this Proverbs 3:5-6 on our own. He’s going to take us where we are and lead us to where we need to go.
John McLarty: Yeah, this is discipline. I think it’s interesting. Just a newly saved Christian can be in this place automatically.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: Because you’ve been born again, the new creature in Christ, that born again soul does completely trust in Christ.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And that’s such a dominating experience
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: In a life you can really see that evidence early on.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: And then, as we’ve talked about over and over again in these podcasts, that flesh is still there.
Kimberly Faith: It is. Our soul and spirit are righteous in Christ. We have Christ’s genetics. We’re immovably his, right? Irrevocably his. But our flesh and our enemies, the flesh, the devil, the world are constantly bombarding us.
John McLarty: But I’ll say, you know, it’s interesting after I’ve been a Christian for fifty years, and there are ways where you could say that total trusting in the Lord that was there maybe in the first two or three years of salvation can dissipate, as it typically does.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: And then just we’ve always been under the impression that rocket booster zeal kind of wears off, but knowledge takes that place and learning the Bible. So here fifty years later, this is still a struggle. I don’t think you ever completely arrive just because the flesh is always there. Well, yeah, but what about this?
Kimberly Faith: Right. It’s never any better than the day we were born again. It’s corrupt through and through. I like what
John McLarty: But you can live in this trusting in the Lord.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: But I’m just saying
Kimberly Faith: It’s a struggle.
John McLarty: The flesh is never just going to completely roll over and play dead.
Kimberly Faith: Sometimes we wish it would, but then we wouldn’t be able to minister to people if we weren’t here in our body, right?
John McLarty: But Paul, in the latter part of his life, he said, I’ve found that whatever state I’m in, therewith to be content. I can be enriched, I can be abased, but I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
Kimberly Faith: I like what you said, that rocket booster time in our life when we’re first saved. What’s crazy is that the more we discipline ourselves to trust God, to go back to when we were first saved basically, the more we get to experience that, just those incredible miracles. Before we started this podcast, we were just inviting God in his spirit to come in here and just really just use us as instruments to his greatness and his wisdom and his miracles really. I know sometimes we go back and I go back and listen, I know you help Hannah proof the podcast transcripts. I just think God was so in that. That was definitely not me. And that’s kind of what we’re talking about because we want this to be his work. And for this thirty to forty minutes, we’re really trusting him to do this. And that’s such an experience too that it becomes addicting to see God do his thing through us. It’s so much better than we could have done on our own. I’ll tell you, one thing that scares me to death is having to do this podcast without God. I can’t even imagine. That would be so horribly fearful.
John McLarty: A vain effort, yeah.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, it’d be a disaster.
John McLarty: Unless the Lord builds the house, they build it in vain.
Kimberly Faith: Yes, yes. I’m seeing God build my addiction to trusting him through the moments that I’m intentionally serving him, and I want that to be extended to all like, to my job, to my children, to my relationships, to my health, all the areas that we seem to reserve to ourselves in our human self sufficiency.
John McLarty: And how about this? We talk about the young Christian, the advantage of that. But then, here, like I said, I’ve been a Christian for fifty years. There’s been turbulent times that you kind of lose your trust, you lose your faith, so to speak, that path of peace. But then you get through it. And we now have the advantage if we look back and we go, Oh, God had a way through that.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Well, that’s kind of like the succession I was just explaining. When I first started pursuing him, he spoke to me in the way I understood. I understood money, right? Because I was still very immature. And then he started speaking to me more about how I can have peace without reliance upon abundance in physical means. And he started shifting me where as I grew to speak more his language, so to speak, in that I didn’t need my circumstances to determine my peace. What I needed was him. Does that make sense?
John McLarty: Yeah, it does.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: And then I think one of the results of trusting in the Lord or maybe, which comes first, the chicken or the egg, is surrender.
Kimberly Faith: Right. That’s a good point.
John McLarty: Because if you trust in the Lord, you’re just going to surrender to him and his direction for your life.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. I mean, we surrendered to all kinds of addictions in our life. Why not surrender to God? He’s the only addiction that doesn’t hurt us.
John McLarty: And that’s really a key to this Proverbs 3:5-6. I mean, it’s challenging, I mean, if you just really look at it. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Number one, all your heart. Then lean not into your own understanding. That’s the struggle we have with our brains. Going like, oh, well, but wait, what about this and this? You know, overthinking things, to figure out on our own. But then this, in all your ways acknowledge him. And to me, that’s the heart, is that you want God’s will.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And then that amazing promise at the end of this passage, and he shall direct your path.
Kimberly Faith: So amazing. The God that runs the universe will direct our path.
John McLarty: Will direct our path.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, he will.
John McLarty: And we can rest in that, and that’s trust.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. You know, when you think about it, we trust him for salvation, which is our most important possession is our salvation, right? We put 100% trust in God for salvation. Otherwise, it’s not salvation. And why would we then shift and rely on something that can never give us what God can give us? And it’s because, I think, if God saved us from death, the worst fate ever, why would we fail to trust him for all the less difficult things? And it’s because, we’ve already kind of touched on it, the enemy, which is, Satan is the primary enemy, right? But we’ve got our flesh and we’ve got the world culture, and he never wants us to experience the joy and satisfaction and peace and all the fruit of God’s spirit that we experience when we 100% trust him. He never wants us to have that experience because he, you know, he had an experience like that before he fell. He knows how good it is.
He’s gotta remember that. And he’s like, you know, he has a diluted idea that he can somehow take the place of God and will be satisfied with that. And the fact is, man, I don’t want to ever go back to where I was. And once you’ve experienced it long enough, God’s presence, I mean, I was teaching a study the other night and we got all excited. It was kind of funny because we were talking about the Holy Spirit being in this place and about that time, I don’t know if lightning struck the house or what happened, but the whole house shook. And I was like, yeah, he’s here.
And they were all laughing because I’m just making a joke a little bit, but kind of not. But I said, you know, just the Holy Spirit, his presence is empowering us with wisdom, with the way to be able to love people outside of our own capabilities, to be patient with people way outside our capabilities, to be long suffering when someone hurts us, to forgive because we’ve been forgiven so much. All those things are so supernatural, and they’re very addicting.
John McLarty: And how many times have we all been confronted with a problem? It could be anything from an automobile thing to someone’s offended us or was struggling with forgiving them or whatever, just getting over something that was inadvertently said. And we try to figure it out in our own mind.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, and then we make a backup plan.
John McLarty: And then we make a backup plan.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, it’s not, Lord, what do I do here? It’s, well, I’m going to react this way because that person doesn’t deserve my friendship. Or, Oh, this bill needs to be paid. I don’t have the money. Well, I’m going to go get a second job, or whatever.
John McLarty: Lynn and I, my wife, your mom, we’ve gone through various, have an issue, a problem. And then you talk about it and this side and that side and alternatives, and then our final conclusion is, why don’t we just give this to the Lord? Like, why did we just have this ten minute discussion? Yeah, exactly. And that’s kind of life. That’s a picture of our life in general.
Kimberly Faith: That’s Philippians 4:6-7, right?
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: You want to read that?
John McLarty: Yeah, I do. Yeah. Be anxious for nothing. Yeah. So that ten to fifteen minutes of just digging this hole of this there’s no apparent solution to this problem. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, that’s a key thought, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
John McLarty: That’s so perfect.
Kimberly Faith: It’s so perfect. And you know, when I was kind of digging into this idea, one of the things the Lord did was bring me to Jeremiah Chapter 17 and just give me this amazing contrast between what it looks like to trust me and what it looks like to trust God. I’m just
going to read those passages through Verses 5-8. The Bible says, cursed, cursed is the word that’s used, is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord. For he shall be like a shrub in the desert and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness in a salt land which is not inhabited. Then it goes on to say, Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose hope is in the Lord, For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river and he does not fear when he comes, its leaf will be green and you will not be anxious in the year of drought nor will cease from yielding fruit. I mean, I couldn’t explain the difference better than the Bible does.
John McLarty: And what a hidden gem in Jeremiah
Kimberly Faith: I know. Jeremiah is full of
John McLarty: 17:5-8, just in case people want to go back and look at that. That sums it up.
Kimberly Faith: It really does. It really does. And this kind of is a good place to segue into just a few biblical examples of what this looks like. I’ll tell you, if you want your life to attract people to Christ because your life is dominated by, let’s just say the first three fruits of the spirit, love, joy, and peace, then this is the key. The key is 100% trust in God. If you want your life to be dominated by joylessness, anxiety, weariness, you got nothing to give, then keep giving God 1% of trust or 10% of trust, because that’s not really trust at all. And I’m not going to lie, many times I know my life looks kind of desert shrubby. I looked a little dried up when it came to just the degree of weariness. And I have to say, we’re going to talk about a few examples, but I want to say this. We mentioned this earlier. God has us involved in so many projects for him and if you look on our website, gofaithstrong.com, you get a picture of this. That doesn’t even really cover what we’re doing, even on the ground, boots on the ground stuff like teaching Bible studies. And I don’t take credit for that at all. That’s God’s work, His way. The reason this is very humbling is because I know there is no earthly way that we could do what we’re doing without God. We don’t have enough time, enough hours in the day, but God says, here, just do it this way and it’ll all get done because I’m going to work it out. You know? It blows my mind. If you want to live having God blow your mind, then this is the podcast. These are the verses to trust him 100% in every area of your life. It’s like an adrenaline. I’m not like an adrenaline junkie with God. I’m like, Okay, God. I don’t know how this is going to happen, but you said do it. So let’s talk about some of those people.
John McLarty: I’ve had days where, you know, it’s just a jumbled up day, things, you know, unexpectedly blindside us.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And we’re never perfect at this.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: But I’ve experienced where if you just had something more of a ministry to do, and it almost got blindsided
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: And then you just go do the ministry anyway, and those little problems kind of resolved, they weren’t as big of a deal as they appeared to be.
Kimberly Faith: It was the paper tiger.
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, for sure. And I’ve told these stories about having a trial and God just saying, Nope, you need to go minister to this person. And I’m pretty intense about trying cases. And the Lord just makes it up, I have no peace. I’m not even able to think about preparing for trial if I try to go against God, what he’s trying to get me to do. And I go do what he tells me to do finally, and then the trial gets continued.
John McLarty: Those are some things that we deal with daily. And you’re never there because that can happen one day and the next day you get waylaid.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: But think about these examples that we’ve got here. Abraham.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah. Let’s talk about Abraham.
John McLarty: Abraham was just told to leave his homeland.
Kimberly Faith: He didn’t know where he was going.
John McLarty: No. No. At a place that I’ll show you.
Kimberly Faith: You want to read those. Is there a couple verses in Hebrews Chapter 11 you want to read about Abraham, or did you open your Bible to that or did you open your Bible to something else?
John McLarty: No. I just opened my Bible. I’ll actually lead with this because I opened my, we’ve talked about some others, but we just did a study the other day on the apostle Paul. And this is one of those examples of how many times have I read you know me, I’ve read through the book of Acts. It’s been kind of my thing for the last two years
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: Is Acts and then the letters of Paul, the early church.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: But when Paul met the Lord on the road to Damascus, you know,the blinding light. But I’ll just say this is in Acts 9:3, And Paul journeyed near Damascus, suddenly a light shined around him, a light from heaven, and he fell to the earth and he heard a voice saying, Saul, Saul, why persecute thou me? And he said, who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And then here’s Saul who became Paul. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what will thou have me to do? So total submission.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And the Lord said unto him, arise and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. So he didn’t reveal the whole thing to him.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And then Paul went to the city. And if you recall the rest of the story, he waited there blind for three days.
Kimberly Faith: Wow. Wow. I’d forgotten that actually.
John McLarty: Can you imagine that?
Kimberly Faith: No.
John McLarty: It’s like so you know
Kimberly Faith: He got knocked off his donkey
John McLarty: Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: And blinded.
John McLarty: And he could’ve, you know
Kimberly Faith: He thought he was serving God.
John McLarty: He could’ve turned stubborn and go like, This isn’t what this is supposed to be like. I’m blind, and now I’m in this city, and I’m just waiting here to be told what to do next.
Kimberly Faith: And think about it. This was the guy who’d been killing Christians, murdering them. He watched the death, the stoning of Stephen, right? And he held the young man’s garments, I think, while they stoned Stephen.
John McLarty: Oh, yeah.
Kimberly Faith: And so he probably had some reasons to be afraid of being blind, very vulnerable. But evidently, when God knocked him off his donkey and blinded him, he was paying attention enough to realize something, he wasn’t, he needed to reverse.
John McLarty: So, yeah, and he followed the Lord without, and so that’s similar, kind of like some of these Old Testament examples we’re looking at. He went and waited for three days. And then it said when Ananias came I’ll just read this. So, there was a certain disciple in Damascus named Ananias, and the Lord came to him and Ananias said, Behold, I am here, Lord. So that same thing, just, What do you want me to do, Lord? And verse 11 is really impacting. And the Lord said unto him, Ananias, arise and go into a street which is called Straight and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, for behold, he prayeth.
Kimberly Faith: Interesting.
John McLarty: So Saul had been there, not mad, not irritated, but praying. Lord, I’m waiting. But it was three days that he waited. And it just really struck me that trusting, that level of just, you know. And a lot of times, God calls us, and Abraham’s the perfect example, God calls us to go, but he doesn’t reveal the end of the story.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, no. I like to call it the great adventure. We were talking earlier this morning, God’s called me to do some different things with my law practice, but he hasn’t told me how. He’s basically saying, I think the way you put it was the law footprint’s going to change, gets a little smaller, the Jesus footprint’s going to get a little bigger.
John McLarty: There you go.
Kimberly Faith: And I’m totally down for it, but I kind of like to know what it’s going to look like financially. Just honestly, and even just from a standpoint of logistically, it’d be nice to know. But God made it real clear, no, I told Abraham to go leave his family. Didn’t tell him where he was going. Didn’t tell him all the details, but he couldn’t do both. He couldn’t stay and go. That’s where this 100% trust comes in. It’s either you trust or you don’t trust. And if you trust, it’s revealed by what you do. It’s not because you can’t halfway walk on the water. You can’t halfway leave Ur, right? You’ve got to figure out. And then one of my favorite examples we’ve talked about before is Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego. I love what they said when I mean, they were facing this blazing furnace and they said, Nope, we’re not bowing to King Nebuchadnezzar’s idol. And I love what they said in Daniel 3:17-18. Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, in other words, if he doesn’t deliver us from the fiery furnace, let it be known to you, O king, we don’t serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image you have set up. You know, really, this is what we are faced with every day. Are we going to bow to the idol of self reliance, or are we going to bow to the idol of trusting God?
John McLarty: That’s a good example. And they were facing I mean, we face, you might say, what they say, our first world trials. They were literally facing being thrown into a blazing furnace.
Kimberly Faith: And King Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t happy about that. He said, Heat this furnace up more. So the people that were tossing them in died, basically. But you know, as a result of their 100% trust in God, they’re part of history. They’re still being talked about thousands of years later. And not just in the Bible, are other extraneous people that historical figures have talked about. I think Josephus mentioned them maybe, I don’t remember. I could be wrong about that. I’m kind of a nerd. I’ve been nerding out on the works of antiquities by Josephus.
John McLarty: Well, this really is interesting, though, because this was in the exile. So, they ended up, you know, Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego, then later on Nehemiah, they were interacting with the Persian Empire.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: So, we still, you know, and I just found, you know, with all this happening in Iran, you get reports out of some of these movements out of Iran, and they still refer to Cyrus the Great.
Kimberly Faith: That’s so interesting.
John McLarty: Isn’t that interesting?
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: Who let Nehemiah go back, in fact, encouraged him to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall. So, they put that in the context of this relationship. So, that was built upon this stance that these three men took for God.
Kimberly Faith: To me, it’s so encouraging to hear people who really faced danger that we really don’t, like you said. You know, nobody’s threatening to throw us in a fiery furnace. We don’t bow down to some idol. But the decisions that we make about whether to 100% trust God or not are just as eternally critical to the people around us and to ourselves and what we’re doing for God’s glory. When you think about it, just using the silly little example I had earlier of talking to someone about the Lord, the Lord had sent me to instead of preparing for trial. Well, if that person gets saved as a result of our interaction, his eternity in the unquenched fire of being divorced from the presence of God forever has been changed completely. And our decisions to 100% trust God when we don’t understand why or how, it’s just such an experience. We can’t even really appreciate today. We can sometimes see some of it, but not always. Matter of fact, I don’t think most of the time we understand.
John McLarty: Yeah, an example would be, we’re not facing going into a fiery furnace, but you and I both have this experience where the Lord’s told us to give a tract to someone. Not just the easy at Walmart, but maybe in a little sketchy neighborhood or a sketchy situation. And I’ve had that strong feeling where I’ve even had to drive past a certain situation and the Lord’s going like, No.
Kimberly Faith: Go back.
John McLarty: You need to go back and go talk to that person and give them a tract with your story. Maybe if it’s a homeless person, I thought you can’t just give somebody a tract and not give them a little money and time, and ask them about themselves. Yeah, souls are at stake.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. I think someday, I’m actually, I didn’t for the first part of my Christian life, I wasn’t excited about the judgment seat of Christ. I really wasn’t because I knew I was failing and I knew I was really missing the mark. But now I’m kind of getting excited about it. You know, I want to hear about the things I’m not hearing, I don’t get to know about now, that how God is able to use me to bring glory to him and bring people to him that I don’t know about now, that’s going to be a time of great rejoicing because we get to see the full fruit of our trust in God.
And that’s going to be an amazing, I think it’s going to be an amazing time. Which is kind of a good segue. I think as we’ve kind of talked about why less than 100% is not trusting the Lord. I mean, look, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, they didn’t get to go somewhere in between. It was all or nothing, right? We talked about the apostle Paul. He could have done something different, but he, I don’t know. At that point, he was even a Christian, if he’d even been born again on the road to Damascus. Are you clear on when he got born again?
John McLarty: I think the most common thought is that he was, it says, you know, the Damascus Road, he was instructed what to do, and then Ananias is the one that
Kimberly Faith: Who led him to Christ.
John McLarty: Who led him to Christ. Yeah.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: Because his eyes were opened.
Kimberly Faith: Right. And the scales fell off. Right. Yeah.
John McLarty: But he definitely had an encounter with the Lord and then obeyed. But people take that for granted. He could have bowed up, I mean, he was a zealous man and kind of
Kimberly Faith: He hated Christians.
John McLarty: Yeah, hated Christians.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, he thought it was an abomination.
John McLarty: So kind of, Hey, I’m blind and I’ve met this person called Jesus and here I am blind. No, don’t take me to Damascus. Lead me back to Jerusalem.
Kimberly Faith: Right. Right.
John McLarty: But he became, oh my goodness, wrote most of the New Testament.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, wrote a lot of it.
John McLarty: And spread churches all over the known world.
Kimberly Faith: Well, when I was studying this, one of the things that I asked the Lord, cause I’m always wanting to do something, you know, I like the practical stuff. Lord, show me areas or ways that I can know whether I’m 100% trusting you or not. And so, the Lord gave me kind of three practical ways to recognize when I’ve deviated from that 100% trust. And the first one is this idea that when I feel constant low grade anxiety ruling my thoughts about whatever future event or whatever present event is going on. That low grade anxiety, even when I’m praying, I’m rehearsing worst case scenarios, right? You know what I’m talking about?
John McLarty: Exactly. Yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about because that’s been a challenge in my life. And maybe in the last five years, I’ve spent more time in the Word and prayer. And then just, I guess the Lord kind of showed me this, my default position is one to live in this low grade anxiety.
Kimberly Faith: Isn’t that crazy?
John McLarty: Worrying about just something, replacing a refrigerator or a car or some social interaction situation. And once that’s resolved, my brain wants to find another-
Kimberly Faith: Thing to worry about?
John McLarty: Low grade anxiety issue.
Kimberly Faith: It’s crazy.
John McLarty: And I’m like, this is like a trap.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah.
John McLarty: But it’s not trusting in the Lord.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right.
John McLarty: So, I can totally relate to this. So yeah, the thought here is constant low grade anxiety is an indication that you’re not trusting in the Lord 100%.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: So are you trusting in him at all?
Kimberly Faith: Exactly. And when you’ve experienced what it feels like, like I mentioned earlier, just doing these podcasts is such a great experience because it is so much all God. You know? There’s no way we could get up here. We’ve never done this before and just have this podcast that is so, how do I say so good? That sounds proud. I don’t mean it that way, but just so blessed by the Lord. It’s obvious it’s the Lord, I’ll just say it that way. And, you know, it’s interesting. So when I was asking the Lord about this, how do I, you know, what’s a tool for combating this constant low grade anxiety? And you’ve said this so many times, but we go back to Philippians 4:6-7 about how when we be anxious for nothing and everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. You’ve talked about so many times how thankfulness takes away our anxiety because we recognize all the things God’s already taking care of. And so I’ve kind of practiced deliberately giving thanks to God for all he is doing right now, all he has done. And then what that does for me is it puts me in the perspective, more like the mind of Christ, then I can just take it to him. He’s just going to take care of it. And then I just give it to him and I leave it there and I don’t pick it up again. I have to discipline myself to do that though and ask God to help me.
John McLarty: That’s interesting because that’s part of renewing our minds. It’s not this mystical, magical thing that happens. It’s a discipline to like, No, I’m going to take that worry thought and replace it with prayer or thankfulness or praying for a situation instead of trying to resolve it in my brain.
Kimberly Faith: Right, because the rest of that verse says, And when you do that, the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guards your hearts; and anxiety is gone because you’ve cast that care on Jesus, right? And so, if you’re having constant low grade anxiety, I mean, just let it not be, I mean, it’s true. Then you’re not 100% trusting God, which is again, this is I’m preaching to the choir here because I’m talking about what God showed me. And one of the other, the second thing God showed me was how I form plans first, and then I ask God to bless them.
John McLarty: That is so typical of us.
Kimberly Faith: We think our common sense is better than God’s eternal wisdom.
John McLarty: Then as an afterthought, ask God to bless them.
Kimberly Faith: Yes. Bless the plans that I have made, Lord. And it’s just a knee jerk thing. I’m not just talking about major life decisions here. I’m talking about sometimes whether I’m supposed to go grocery shopping versus going do something different. The other day, I was all excited because I got to be home for the weekend. I hardly ever get to be in my house for the weekend. I was all excited about all the things I wanted to do and it was going to be very relaxing. And God did not have, that was not God’s plan for me to just you know, have a chill out day. And I remember the first encounter that morning at 9AM where God was like, this is a ministry opportunity. Invite this person in for coffee and you let me take over. Here, I know what you want to do. You want to go hike. I get it. I’m aware of this. Okay? And so I was like, I did not have peace not inviting this person in. And two and a half hours later, we talked about the gospel, we talked about just all kinds of things. And I was having more of a satisfying period of time than I would have had hiking in the woods for two and a half hours. And then it just went from there to the next thing to the next thing, and ended that night teaching a makeup Zoom bible study with somebody else for two and a half hours. And it was like maybe it wasn’t, an hour and a half. And it was just like a revival. She and I were having such a good time, but it’s not the plans that I had made.
John McLarty: That’s a great example because that’s very daily.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: I mean, you can think of, form plans first. They could be moving to a different city, a different job, a lot of things. But those, that’s kind of really is where the rubber meets the road.
Kimberly Faith: Yes, yes.
John McLarty: Is more of those daily agenda, to do list decisions.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, and you know, one of the tools that God uses too is like the Proverb, I call it the Proverbs 3:6 habit. It’s not every decision. There’s some decisions that just kind of flow in the day that you know you’re supposed to be doing, but just asking the Lord, you know, I acknowledge you’re already in the future. You know what is best. Just grieve my heart if I’m making the wrong decision and give me peace if it’s your will because I want you to direct my path. You know? And it’s not that difficult. Lord, grieve me if this is a wrong decision, but show me peace. And sometimes in the beginning of the day, I’ll ask the Lord, I’ll pray that prayer. Just, Lord, show me your path of peace. Grieve me if I’m not on it. And then he carries that out all day because he knows I forget. He knows we’re weak. He knows our weakness. He knows we’re just dust, right? Isn’t that what the Bible says?
John McLarty: Well, that’s an excellent tool for folks to think about because, a word maybe we’ve coined, that’s very relatable to me, is if our default position is not this low grade anxiety, but the path of peace, it’s very legitimate to sense, to want to sense and ask the Lord, Grieve me when I’m going the wrong direction.
Kimberly Faith: Right, right.
John McLarty: Because to me, this may sound funny, but grief is more recognizable to me than peace.
Kimberly Faith: That’s so true.
John McLarty: Because peace is kind of a default position, just because the Lord’s so good. But if I’m going, say, on a hike instead of going over to have prayer with Brother George, like your example, and I start that. And then if the Lord, just that grief can be and I think most people can relate to this. It’s almost like a physical feeling.
Kimberly Faith: It’s kind of like you’re riding a horse.
John McLarty: And you have to overcome it. No, I’m going to go my own way. You have to overcome and we pray for that, actually. We want that guidance. That’s one of the ways God guides us.
Kimberly Faith: Well, it’s kind of like riding a horse and the horse is a bit in his mouth. The horses that are real stubborn, you put a spade bit in their mouth, which is a real painful thing. And I don’t want that. I want to use the snaffle. I want God to use the snaffle on me. I just want the gentle nudging one way or the other. I don’t want the spade bit. I don’t want pain, more pain. There is enough pain in this world as it is. But it’s just, the Lord is so good to just guide us if we just ask him. He wants to do that. It’s not like he’s holding out on us.
John McLarty: That does go back to that Proverbs. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him. That’s to me this continuous mindset.
Kimberly Faith: You form my plans.
John McLarty: Yeah, I want your will, Lord.
Kimberly Faith: Yes, you form my plans.
John McLarty: Yeah, you form my plans. That’s our default prayer.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, yeah. Well, and then the third thing
John McLarty: And you know, something else that Pat mentioned, Kim, I think we’re close to as we start to wrap up, is if that’s not your default position, that you want God to guide our path, well, what kind of God do we have? What does that tell us about our opinion of God if we’re not wanting his path. Like, he’s got the wrong path for us?
Kimberly Faith: That’s such a good point. And that actually segues into a third thing God showed me was that, you know, if we know who God, if we know God for who he says he is, then we’re going to want his path because we know like
John McLarty: He’s a God of loving kindness.
Kimberly Faith: That’s right. And so the third tell, so to speak, the third way to know that you’re not trusting God 100% is when people, finances, your own personal failure, whatever the situation may be, have become your true safety net. So you say you trust God, yet you get the most relief by a financial breakthrough or a relationship breakthrough or some kind of, you know, goal that you’ve met instead of the peace that God gives that’s so obvious. In other words, these small things, I mean, you know, it’s not wrong to rejoice if you inherit some money or whatever or you have a friendship that went south and then is reconciled. Those are all blessings. But when we know what the peace of God feels like and then experience walking in the satisfaction of his will, then that’s the kind of peace that so eclipses a temporary financial thing. That money’s going to be gone probably in a year anyway or whatever. Right?
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: We’re not taking it with us. And God gave me when I was asking him, give me a tool. He took me to Isaiah 26 where this prayer, you know, that I kind of wrote from Isaiah 26 is, Lord, you promised, quote, to keep them in perfect peace. The one you know, whose mind is stayed on you. The one that’s stayed on you. You promised to keep them in perfect peace because we trust you. So help me to trust you forever because you’re my everlasting strength. And, you know, I also asked the holy spirit to just expose any hidden idols that I’m trusting more than God. Confess them, renounce them, and affirm that God alone is enough. And, you know, when we do that, then we are, like you said earlier, trusting God for who he says he is instead of who we’ve made him to be. In other words, we’re not treating God like our safety net.
No. He’s the point man. He’s in the driver’s seat.
John McLarty: And he wants to give us an enriched, abundant life.
Kimberly Faith: Yes.
John McLarty: Not an easy street, but fulfilling. Part of his great plan.
Kimberly Faith: You brought up the Apostle Paul, and he says, I found in whatever state I find myself in, I’m content because my contentment is not based on my circumstances, it’s based on the one who satisfies my soul. And I love what Jesus said, you know, in Matthew 11:28. He says, come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Fact is, we’re either resting in God or we’re not. There’s no middle ground. We’re either, because it’s written all over our face. It’s written all over I mean, everything about us. When somebody comes up to me and says, man, you have such peace right now. I can always say, without doubt, it’s not coming from me. It’s coming from Jesus. He’s the Prince of Peace.
John McLarty: Yeah. And resting is a perfect picture, an example of peace
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: And trusting.
Kimberly Faith: Right.
John McLarty: We’re resting. That’s kind of like, I’m right now resting in this chair. I haven’t thought one time about maybe this chair is going to collapse.
Kimberly Faith: And for whatever it’s worth, I haven’t looked at your face and questioned that you weren’t resting. You didn’t look anxious, dad, like the chair was about to break.
John McLarty: Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. I will give you peace. And that’s coming from trusting in him. But I think I love the idea. He’s a God of loving kindness.
Kimberly Faith: Yeah, he is. His loving kindness is from everlasting to everlasting.
John McLarty: He’s worthy of trust. And he wants to lead us into an exciting life.
Kimberly Faith: And think about it. If we’re trusting in ourselves you know, instead of God, there’s just no comparison between our mind and his. There’s no comparison between his strength and ours. I mean, there’s just no comparison, and we’re just foolish not to just give him everything. And, you know, when we’re born again, when we’ve received Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, then we have a choice. Before we’re born again, we don’t have a choice because our soul and spirit are dead to God.
John McLarty: Right.
Kimberly Faith: But then when we’re born again, he has taken the anxiety of our soul and spirit and he satisfied us. He’s given us everything we need to satisfy our anxiety. And trusting self or trusting God, that’s the choice. It’s an hourly choice almost.
John McLarty: And think about this, Kim. How do we get that in the first place? Salvation, trusting, that believing in Christ, as we ask for salvation, trust. That’s how it starts.
Kimberly Faith: That’s how it starts, right. Like we said earlier, if we trust him for salvation for our eternal life, why wouldn’t we trust him for our life right now? You know?
John McLarty: Perfect.
Kimberly Faith: And that’s, man, that’s just so rich, and I’m just grateful that God, Pat Briney gave the sermon that inspired this podcast. I’m just grateful. God is so good.
John McLarty: Amen.
Jacob Paul: You’ve been listening to the Truth in Love podcast with your hosts, Kimberly Faith and John Mac. To discover more answers to the big questions in life, visit us at gofaithstrong.com.
